Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

Only in 2011 did it surface that in New York, at least, the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy had been stirred up for political gain in part by money from Robert Mercer, the co-CEO of the $15 billion Long Island hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. To aid a conservative candidate in New York, Mercer gave $1 million to help pay for ads attacking supporters of the “Ground Zero mosque.” A former computer programmer who had a reputation as a brilliant mathematician and an eccentric loner, Mercer was a relative newcomer to the Koch summits. But he was immediately impressed by the organization. He had long held the government in low regard and shared the Kochs’ antipathy toward government regulations. In addition to fanning flames around the “mosque” issue, in 2010 Mercer reportedly gave over $300,000 to a super PAC trying to defeat a Democratic congressman from Oregon, Pete DeFazio, who had proposed taxing stock trades. Renaissance, a so-called quant fund, traded stocks in accordance with computer algorithms at enormously high frequencies and volumes, so the proposed tax would have bitten into the firm’s legendary profits. Someone familiar with Mercer’s thinking maintained that the proposed tax on stock trades was not behind his involvement in the race; rather, Mercer shared deep skepticism about global warming with the Republican candidate, Arthur Robinson. Instead of openly debating these issues, though, Mercer, who declined to speak about his motivations, paid for ads that ma...